Disjunctivism, as a theory of visual experience, claims that the mental states involved in a “good case” experience of veridical perception and a “bad case” experience of hallucination differ, even in those cases in which the two experiences are indistinguishable for their subject. Consider the veridical perception of a bar stool and an indistinguishable hallucination; both of these experiences might be classed together as experiences (as) of a bar stool or experiences of seeming to see a bar stool. This might (...) lead us to think that the experiences we undergo in the two cases must be of the same kind, the difference being that the former, but not the latter, is connected to the world in the right kind of way. Such a conjecture has been called a “highest common factor” or “common kind” assumption. At heart, disjunctivism consists in the rejection of this assumption. According the disjunctivist, veridical experiences and hallucinations do not share a common component. There are a host of interesting questions surrounding disjunctivism including: What is involved in the claims that good case and bad case experiences differ? Why might one might want to be a disjunctivist? What kinds of claims can the disjunctivist make about hallucination and illusion? These questions, and problems for the thesis, will be discussed as we proceed. (shrink)

Type-B physicalists have provided an array of stories to explain how Mary, the omniscient scientist raised in a black-and-white room, could still learn something upon release. But these stories—whether they appeal to know-how, knowledge by acquaintance, or fine-grained phenomenal beliefs—have been repeatedly criticized for failing to do justice to the significance of what Mary learns. Call this the Significance Challenge to type-B physicalism. The paper’s ultimate goal is to provide a type-B physicalism response to this Challenge by focusing on surprise—assuming, (...) rather intuitively, that surprise can be used as a proxy for significance. The paper considers three accounts of surprise drawn from the philosophy and psychology literatures: violation-of-expectation accounts, explanation accounts, and Baras and Na’aman’s (Philos Phenomenol Res 105(1):195–215, 2022) Significance Account. The discussion of these accounts provides us with a two-pronged answer to the Challenge. First: it makes clear that though it is often assumed that anti-physicalists have a straightforward way to account for Mary’s surprise—she acquires a new coarse-grained belief about a brand-new nonphysical property—that assumption is mistaken. Second: it uncovers specific (and physicalist-friendly) mechanisms that would explain Mary’s surprise. I conclude that type-B physicalists can satisfactorily deal with the Significance Challenge. (shrink)

Excerpt from The Pragmatic Element in Knowledge And whatever our concepts or meanings may be, there is a truth about them just as absolute and just as definite and certain as in the case of mathematics. In other fields we so seldom try to think in the abstract, or by pure logic, that we do not notice this. But obviously it is just as true. Wherever there is any set of interrelated concepts, there, quite apart from all questions of (...) application or the things we use them of, we have generated a whole complex array of orderly relations or patterns of meaning. And there must be a truth about these - a purely logical truth, in abstracto, and a truth which is certain apart from experience - even though this is only a part of the truth which we want to discover, and the rest of it is of a quite different sort which depends upon experience. Ordinarily we do not separate out this a'priori truth, because ordinarily we do not distinguish the purely logical significance of concepts from the application of words to sensible things. In fact it is only the mathematician who is likely to do this at all. But I should like to indicate that this separation is always possible and that it is important for the understanding of knowledge. To this end, let me use the term 'concept' for this element of purely logical meaning. We can then discriminate the conceptual element in thought as the element which two minds must have in common - not merely may have or do have but absolutely must have in common - when they understand each other. I suppose it is a frequent assumption that we are able to apprehend one another's meanings because our images and sensations are alike. But a little thought will Show that this assumption is very dubious. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

Although Merleau-Ponty’s early phenomenology of perception and his essays on art, politics, and language already showed an affinity between the aesthetic phenomena of expression and style and the political and cultural dynamics of society at large, this paper specifically focuses on his late theorizing of the notion of flesh and its relevance to his late understanding of politics and democracy. The emergence of flesh as a concept was contemporary to Merleau-Ponty’s break with Marxism as a philosophical model and with revolutionary (...) dialectics as a political project. It is by showing that such a break was consistently grounded on his theorizing of the being flesh of both the body and of society that this paper shows Merleau-Ponty’s unique contribution to democratic theory and to contemporary political philosophy. In the course of this analysis, it will become clear that in philosophically breaking with the position of a “no that is a yes”—i.e. the model of the revolution, which implies a total negation of the given that becomes a total affirmation of the new order (dictatorship) once in power—he would politically embrace the Weberian “heroic liberalism”—or his “non-communist left”—of parliamentary democracy. (shrink)

First published in 1988, the aim of this book can be stated in Nietzsche’s words: ‘To look at science from the perspective of the artist, but at art from that of life’. The title contests the notions that science alone can provide us with the most objective truth about the world, and that artistic endeavour can produce nothing more valuable than entertainment. O’Hear argues that art and the study of art are not indispensable aspects of human life, and that this (...) is equally as important as the investigation of the natural world. (shrink)

In 1931 eminent chemist Fritz Paneth maintained that the modern notion of “element” is closely related to (and as “metaphysical” as) the concept of element used by the ancients (e.g., Aristotle). On that basis, the element chlorine (properly so-called) is not the elementary substance dichlorine, but rather chlorine as it is in carbon tetrachloride. The fact that pure chemicals are called “substances” in English (and closely related words are so used in other European languages) derives from philosophical (...) compromises made by grammarians in the late Roman Empire (particularly Priscian [fl. ~520 CE]). When the main features of the constitution of isotopes became clear in the first half of the twentieth century, the formal (IUPAC) definition of a “chemical element” was changed. The features that are “essential” to being an element had previously been “transcendental” (“beyond the sphere of consciousness”) but, by the mid-twentieth century the defining characteristics of elements, as such, had come to be understood in detail. This amounts to a shift in a “horizon of invisibility” brought about by progress in chemistry and related sciences. Similarly, chemical insight is relevant to currently-open philosophical problems, such as the status of “the bundle theory” of the coherence of properties in concrete individuals. (shrink)

Heidegger’s doubts concerning the concept of “empathy” are unequivocally proven not only by his general tendency to avoid it, but also by his sharp critique of this term, as presented in both Being and Time and the lectures from the Summer Semester 1925, History of the Concept of Time. However, the concept of empathy is used by Heidegger in a positive, albeit rather allusive fashion, in three consecutive lectures of his early Freiburg period: Basic Problems of Phenomenology, Phenomenology of Intuition (...) and Expression and The Phenomenology of Religious Life. The present paper analyzes these three passages of Heidegger’s early lectures in close detail, revealing their connection to the conceptions of empathy found in the works of both Dilthey and Scheler. Thus it aims to connect Heidegger’s rather idiosyncratic conception of intersubjectivity with some of the discussions on that topic in the phenomenological millieu of the early 1920s. (shrink)

This essay interprets Machiavelli’s famous letter to Francesco Vettori in terms of a play-element that runs across his works. The letter to Vettori is a masterpiece of epistolary form, but beyond its most memorable passage, where Machiavelli recounts his evening in study, it has not received much scholarly attention. Reading the letter in its entirety is to discover Machiavelli’s account of an eclectic political education and the pleasures of playing with others. Machiavelli’s letter speaks to a basic ludicity in (...) his political thinking, in which play is not opposed to the serious, and diverse play forms can be thought together. Hans-George Gadamer’s Truth and Method, Johan Huizinga’s Homo Ludens, and Roger Caillois’s Man, Play, and Games provide resources for reconstructing this play-element in Machiavelli’s thought. (shrink)

A narrative element is essential to philosophy, because nothing gets going in it without some vision, some story about what the world, or the subject, is like. The argumentative element can only structure the story from the inside; it can never prove it true. And, whatever clarification arguments provide for the story, the latter remains in all its ambiguous glory, ready to originate new arguments and to spawn new visions.

O presente texto é a tradução do décimo segundo capítulo da obra Doctrine of the Will (Doutrina da Vontade), de Asa Mahan (1799-1889), publicado originalmente em 1845. Nele, Mahan defende que, embora a Inteligência e a Sensibilidade dos agentes morais sejam, em si mesmas, destituídas de liberdade, e por conseguinte, de moralidade, a Vontade possui um controle indireto sobre essas faculdades na vasta medida em que elas apresentam objetos para sua ação em diferentes direções. Assim, quando influenciados pela Vontade – (...) seja direta ou indiretamente - os fenômenos das outras faculdades da mente constituem fenômenos complexos da mente humana, e possuem caráter moral. Segundo Mahan, as ações externas, assim como os estados da Inteligência e da Sensibilidade, quando são requeridos ou proibidos pela lei moral, ou pela Revelação, são requeridos ou proibidos por serem o resultado natural e necessário de intenções corretas ou erradas. Nesses casos, os requerimentos e as proibições se referem às causas desses atos ou estados, ou seja, à ação da Vontade da qual eles resultam necessariamente. Na apresentação de suas proposições, Mahan usa argumentos relacionados à ação da Vontade em direção às propensões naturais, como emoções desejos e anelos; e às afeições religiosas, como o arrependimento, o amor e a fé. Ele também defende que as afeiçoes religiosas requeridas pela lei moral são atos voluntários da mente e não meros estados da sensibilidade ou meras convicções da Inteligência. (shrink)

Natural Object or Element of an Artwork? Case Study: Artists, Artworks and Exhibitions in Cluj, Romania. In this article, we discuss the relationship between art and natural objects such as stuffed animals, skins, bones, dried plants or minerals and their aesthetical value from their position as artworks or elements of an artwork. In Cluj, between 2017 and 2019, artworks and exhibitions which integrate this type of practices and natural history materiality flourished. We aim to compose an inventory that could (...) contribute to the archive of local art events, artworks, and artists in order to serve further analysis of local specificity, which could eventually find relevance in the theoretic approaches of art. In conclusion, we underline some of the theoretical approaches of the dynamics of natural object’s values and of the procedures established by organizations such as museums and galleries. (shrink)

. Revisioning the Fifth Element. Can critical realism reconcile competence and Bildung for a more sustainable twenty-first-century education? Journal of Critical Realism: Vol. 18, Sustainability, Interdisciplinarity and Transformative change: A Critical Realist Response to the Crisis System, pp. 402-419.

A chemical element, treated as a concept, entails objects and attributes. From the eighteenth century to date, objects include substances up to quasi-molecular species and nuclides. Attributes range from non-decomposability up to lifetimes of 10 -14 seconds. By analyzing the historical changes of the concept, we found the central role “chemical reaction” has played. However, historical changes of objects and attributes of the concept of chemical element lead to expand chemical reactions to the more general “chemical relations,” which (...) contain traditional chemical reactions and any kind of relation between chemical species. In such a setting, a general structure for the concept of chemical element is presented that entails chemical species as objects and detected chemical relations and experimental measurement of atomic number as attributes. (shrink)

In approaching contemporary art it is useless to try to determine to what extent it conforms or not to a previously conceived notion of art acquired from past centuries. It is more advisable instead to understand what idea, perhaps even an original one, this art imposes on us. In other words, when faced with a new experience, we should draw from it the original “problematic,” that is, formulate appropriate ideas to explain it. If we limit ourselves to the first years (...) of the twentieth century, we can observe both in its content and style one particular characteristic: the importance of play. Artists have sought in related activities, such as dance or music, an image analogous to their own. They have sometimes looked for it in activities like those that interested Vermeer: The Weigher of Pearls or Lady with a Spinet (in Buckingham Palace), or in this inscription of the artist in one of his paintings relating to music: Musica laetitiae comes, medicina dolorum, which we are tempted to take as a motto and to apply to the activity of the painter himself. The same impression is given by some of the paintings of Watteau, the Musician or the Indifferent, in which we feel that the painter wanted to say something about himself. Through this catalogue of images of music or dance the artist seems to have acquired with particular pleasure an awareness of the possibility of his own art. These somewhat remote images are the ancestors of a family of buffoons, harlequins and clowns, which multiply to an extraordinary extent at the beginning of the twentieth century. (shrink)

The concept of element is fundamental to modern chemistry and yet it embodies an apparently persistent ambiguity that has remained unresolved for the nearly one hundred years since it was made official by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemists (IUPAC) in 1923. This chapter presents a take on why this definition has the form it does, how it arose, and why it persists. Following the introductory overview, there are two historical sections, one on Immanuel Kant whose imprint (...) on modern philosophy and science persists in various forms, including the genesis and interpretation of the IUPAC definition. Kant initially dismissed chemistry as a science, though he had a lifelong interest in this area. In his later years, his opinion about chemistry changed in response to the rapid growth of the field in the late 1700s. This change of mind had a profound impact on him; he began, but could not finish, a significant revision to his critical philosophy of science. The other historical section is on Ernst Cassirer, founder of the Marburg school of neo-Kantian thought, who wrote about chemistry both before and after the IUPAC definition above. Despite Cassirer’s deep engagement with the cultural and intellectual history and philosophy of science, very little is to be found about him in the literature of the philosophy of chemistry. The chapter concludes with a comparison of Cassirer’s relational understanding of chemistry with Guillermo Restrepo’s mathematical chemistry, and then with Joachim Schummer’s conceptual analysis of the “chemical core of chemistry.”. (shrink)

This paper presents gesture as an element of aesthetic experience of musical work. It focuses on specific dialectics of gesture in musical works as that which is visual or highlighted and at the same that which speaks to the listener. The difficulty in describing what constitute musical expressive gesture is there to guide us. The gesture stands in way of recognizing meaning and providing communication but at the same time that, which speaks to the listener is the most secluded, (...) intimate part of musical experience. (shrink)

Summary Apart from hydrogen, helium is the most abundant chemical element in the universe, and yet it was only discovered on the Earth in 1895. Its early history is unique because it encompasses astronomy as well as chemistry, two sciences which the spectroscope brought into contact during the second half of the nineteenth century. In the modest form of a yellow spectral line known as D3, ‘helium’ was sometimes supposed to exist in the Sun's atmosphere, an idea which is (...) traditionally ascribed to J. Norman Lockyer. Did Lockyer discover helium as a solar element? How was the suggestion received by chemists, physicists and astronomers in the period until the spring of 1895, when William Ramsay serendipitously found the gas in uranium minerals? The hypothetical element helium was fairly well known, yet Ramsay's discovery owed little or nothing to Lockyer's solar element. Indeed, for a brief while it was thought that the two elements might be different. The complex story of how helium became established as both a solar and terrestrial element involves precise observations as well as airy speculations. It is a story that is unique among the discovery histories of the chemical elements. (shrink)

Many people claim to have had direct perceptual awareness of God. William Alston, Richard Swinburne, Gary Gutting, and others have based their philosophical views on these reports. But using analogies from our encounters with humans whose abilities surpass our own, we realize that something essential is missing from these reports. The absence of this element renders it highly unlikely that these people have actually encountered a divine being. (Published Online August 11 2004).

Twenty-five years ago Paul Wilpert called for a thorough re-examination of our knowledge of the content of Aristotle's lost workDe Philosophia. Expressing his reservations about the validity of our current reconstruction of the work, he wrote: ‘On the basis of attested fragments, we form for ourselves a picture of the content of a lost writing, and this picture in turn serves to interpret new fragments as echoes of that writing. So our joy over the swift growth of our collection of (...) fragments is clouded by the thought that we are not thereby really nearing the original character of the work, but we are entangling ourselves ever more tightly in a picture we ourselves have created.’ As a corrective Wilpert called for a critical retracing of our steps since 1830 to establish a more secure reconstruction of this important lost work.Since then there have been numerous, searching analyses of the ideas and fragments ofDe Philosophia, but at least one venerable old theory has escaped critical reappraisal: namely, the theory that inDe PhilosophiaAristotle discussed his doctrine of a fifth element, i.e. his belief that the heavenly bodies are composed of an element distinct from the four earthly elements, earth, water, air, and fire. This theory has become so widely accepted that it has virtually become a fact. When support is needed, most modern authors simply cite one or both of the two modern authorities on the early Aristotle, namely W. Jaeger and E. Bignone. The more meticulous restate the traditional evidence with complete confidence that this evidence proves their case. If Wilpert's hope for a firmly grounded reconstruction of theDe Philosophiais ever to be achieved, one of the importantdesideratatoday is a critical re-examination of the evidence for the fifth element in this work. (shrink)

The present article deals with reported speech as an element of argumentation in the newspaper discourse of Great Britain viewed in the unity of its syntactic and semantic characteristics and argumentative functions. Theoretically, the research is based on the dialogic understanding of quotations, the dialogue theory by Bakhtin and contemporary argumentation theory. The proposed integral approach to reported speech combining linguistics with logic and argumentation theory revealed the relations between purely linguistic characteristics of reported speech with its functioning in (...) argumentative discourse of contemporary British press. (shrink)